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Here and There

I was walking in a local park recently, found myself trampling acorns, and was immediately thrown back to the days when I once walked Mattie to her new middle school, soon after she came to San Antonio. She would have been 12 then and I remember our walking up the street where we live, a wide boulevard where most of the front gardens sport at least one live oak tree, and we would see who could find the largest acorn and make the biggest crunch.

Hard to think Mattie will be 16 next month and is in her sophomore year of high school. During the last week of her summer holidays, we went to Philadelphia for a few days, and what a lovely city it is with its easy downtown walking, plethora of historical buildings, art museums, French-style bistros and other restaurants boasting fine new American cuisine. Mattie and I were immediately reminded of London (especially east London) as we walked around the city with its elegant Georgian architecture, tucked away cemeteries, leafy squares, small gardens and old hospitals. We thought of Lewes, too, our former home, and one narrow street in particular (Elphrick Alley) which has been continually inhabited since 1700; Mattie was particularly struck by the fact that one of its front doors was numbered 116, the number of our old house.

On our return to San Antonio, I asked Mattie what she remembered most about her trip to Philadelphia and she said it was the fact that I’d unknowingly booked a hotel in the gay part of town; and that we had seen a homeless person sitting on the pavement with a sign by his collection box with the words F*** Trump (Macey gave him a dollar).

Back in south Texas, we have witnessed an invasion of Snout butterflies – parts have literally been swarming with them. I first became aware of these butterflies a week ago whilst out cycling in Comfort, a town settled by German immigrants, and found myself engulfed in what at first I thought were leaves falling but were in fact small brown butterflies with a patch of orange and spots on their wings.

Last Friday, whilst I was driving back from Garner State Park in the hill country, large swarms were crossing the countryside and I arrived home with a splattered window screen and a number of dead butterflies lying flattened in the radiator grill (in as perfect a condition as if a lepidopterist had pinned them to a board).

Garner State Park was as lovely as ever, the river is deep enough for swimming and the hiking affords splendid views of the surrounding hill country. I was particularly delighted to see growing on the hillside the native Lindheimer morning glory, a short climber with trumpets of the most beautiful, almost luminescent, pale bluish-mauve. This was the first time I had seen it growing in the wild, unexpectedly popping up behind a prickly cactus here, a scrubby tree there. On the drive to the park, I had spotted at least a dozen hawks and Michael and Macey, very unusually, spotted one in a neighbour’s front garden this weekend. (Mike has just entered my study to say that he can hear the hawk screeching nearby and we wonder if it has a nest in our neighbour’s red oak.)

Recently, at Mitchell Lake in south San Antonio, I saw a large flock of barn swallows darting around and read that they tend to gather by water in preparation for their onward flight to south America where they will spend the winter. They certainly looked very pretty with their apricot breasts and forked tails. As I was watching them, ten red-winged blackbirds in loose formation flew close by followed by a scarlet cardinal. Egrets were perched in mesquite trees around the lake that soon will welcome hundreds if not thousands of migrating ducks.

I recently learned this is also the time of year for broad-winged hawks to be flying over Corpus Christi, on their way from Canada to south America. I hope to get a sighting of them at some point next weekend. A lot of improvements were made to our house there over the summer, though there are still odds and ends to tie up, the painting and tiling to be done and a new patio to be built. Happily, we have seen the last of our workman, Victor, who did his job pretty well but was growing more and more erratic as time went by. We plan to go down this Friday and already I am thinking of oleander shrubs profuse with pink, dark red and salmon-pink blossom and the cream and soft pink of frangipane trees.